💡 Musings of the Angry Optimist: Wuuut, is AI making artists more creative?!

My thoughts, tips, and other tidbits that I believe are suited for a fact-based optimist. This newsletter is for you who are a Premium Supporter at Warp News. Feel free to share it with friends and acquaintances.

🎨 Not just the talentless, apparently

Last spring, I had an epic debate with illustrator Henrik Tamm. He was furious that AI would now take his job.

"For someone in a creative profession, this technology is an existential threat. We're being zeroed out."

It was especially the talentless types that irritated him:

"It's wrong when anyone - without any talent for visual art - can do this."

In my response, I thought this development was actually good:

"Generative AI liberates creativity. People who can't paint, design, illustrate, make videos or write good text or create music can now do so. Not at the same level as Henrik Tamm and his colleagues, but at a much higher level than before."

I also pointed out that despite this, skilled individuals like Tamm have a head start and can take their "talent" to a new level.

"The knowledge that Henrik Tamm and his colleagues possess doesn't become worthless. On the contrary, by embracing generative AI, they can take it to new levels."

This led Tamm to conclude that his opponent was also talentless:

"I can assume that Sundin himself doesn't possess any talent for image, word, or music. It's these people who usually come with this attitude."

But now research has emerged suggesting that the talentless had a point after all.

• Artists using AI tools produce 50 percent more artwork.
• Artwork created with AI assistance receives 50 percent more appreciation from other users.

However, there was something worrying in the study. The art became more generic over time.

But this wasn't true for everyone. Those who were good at using their own human creative intelligence in combination with artificial intelligence became even more creative and unique in their expression.

Once again, it's the centaurs who level up the most. Those who are best at combining human intelligence with artificial intelligence.

Of course, jobs for illustrators will disappear, but not all. Those who use their expertise and become really good with AI tools will reach new heights. There will be jobs for such people for a long time.

Mathias Sundin
Angry Optimist

❗ Other stuff

A tweet by Max Roser shows increadible progress in life expantacy and how bad we are predicting progress.

"A bit of a complicated chart, but if you spend a bit of time looking at it I hope you find it valuable.

The chart shows in which country women had the highest life expectancy in each year since 1840.

Back then, women lived longest in Sweden, where they had a life expectancy of 46 years.

Since then the maximum life expectancy increased incredibly steadily. The long-run trend is that life expectancy increased by about 1 year every 4 years. The trend is almost a perfectly straight line.

The chart also shows various predictions that asserted what the highest possible life expectancy for humans could possibly be. ... Prediction after prediction was broken as life expectancy increased steadily, as you see in the chart.

None of this happened by itself, it was an achievement of the efforts of people around the world in these two centuries.

If you see zoom out to see where we are coming from, it becomes obvious that we are capable of incredible achievements that make our lives much better."

😮 French farmers want GMO blockade to end

Hold on to your hats now.

There are record-low harvests in France, so French farmers are pissed. So far, nothing new.

But, in addition to state support, they're demanding that GMO crops should no longer be banned. These crops are more resilient and less affected by bad weather. (They're also completely safe.)

If even French farmers are for an innovation, you'd have to be a real reactionary to be against it.

Je suis, French farmer